News
from the Global Wiesenthal Empire:
thousands of branches worldwide

Dublin, Saturday, February 7,
2004

Limerick
museum at centre of looted Nazi art
claims

THE leading
anti-Nazi group, the
Simon
Wiesenthal
center,
has called for an inquiry into the
contents of the Hunt Museum in Limerick
after linking the former owners of the
collection to "notorious dealers in art
looted by the Nazis". Arthur
Beesley, Political Reporter,
reports

THE claims about the
multi-million-euro art and artefact
collection amassed by the late John
Hunt and his late wife, Gertrude, were
made in a letter to the President, Mrs
McAleese, last week. The centre's
international
liaison director,
Dr Shimon Samuels, called on the
President to suspend the Museum of the
Year award she presented to the Hunt
Museum in November.

Mrs McAleese replied three days later
saying she was precluded from comment
under the Constitution. She has now passed
the letter to the Taoiseach, who in turn
has passed it to the Minister for Arts, Mr
O'Donoghue. His spokesman said last night
he had not yet received the letter.

The museum's director, Ms Virginia
Teehon, said it would co-operate with
any investigation into the Hunt
collection.

Separately, The Irish Times has
established that the board of the Hunt
Museum commissioned a report, in the form
of an essay, from Limerick-based art
historian Ms Judith Hill in 1998
which claimed that John and Gertrude Hunt
were active in the art market in post-war
Germany. The essay was never published and
there was no investigation into any Nazi
connection.

Dr Samuels
said "sources" had indicated that John
and Gertrude Hunt had "intimate
business relationships with notorious
dealers in art looted by the
Nazis".

He declined last night to identify such
dealers, but said work was in course on
documentation. "When we're ready, we'll
come out with it," he said.

He said in his letter to the President
that the Hunts had "close personal ties"
in the 1940s with Adolf Mahr, the
Austrian Nazi who was then director of the
National Museum of Ireland. In addition,
the letter also alleged that the Hunts'
arrival in Ireland in 1940 was "one step
ahead of British suspicions of their
alleged espionage".

Dr Samuels called on the museum to
publish details about the museum's entire
collection on the Internet so that
eventual
claimants
could "scrutinise these objects in the
manner of suspect art held by museums
worldwide". Ms Teehon said she was willing
to do this.

The museum's chairman, Mr George
Stacpoole, rejected the allegations
from the Wiesenthal Centre. "As far as I'm
aware there are no problems whatsoever,"
he said. "In many ways I think it's unfair
because no-one has come up with any
facts."

Mr John Hunt jnr and Ms Trudi Hunt, son
and daughter of the Hunts, told The
Irish Times yesterday that there was
no foundation to the allegations. Mr John
Hunt jnr said: "I have never heard
anything remotely like that. I think it's
bizarre. It's so over the top that I'm not
concerned."

The essay commissioned by the museum
board five years ago noted that the Hunts
had made an extended visit to Germany in
the 1940s.

Titled John and Gertrude Hunt,
Virtuoso Collectors and Benefactors,
it said:

"Wide-scale Nazi thefts and
the looting endemic in wars exacerbated
the hazards of art dealing, causing
many items to lose provenance: this too
coloured the environment in which art
changed hands in the mid-20th century.
The Hunts fitted seamlessly into this
world."

Mr John Hunt jnr and Ms Trudi Hunt
received tax relief worth €762,000 in
1999 when they donated some of their own
collection to the State.